Author Description

English summary: What can be said about the care people receive at the end of their lives? In what terms should these choices be presented when all hope for a cure or a return to one's former life is gone? What sort of health care can be provided under the various options available? Based upon testimonies gathered from highly specialized medical care providers, palliative care teams, or people stricken with Alzheimer's disease, this collaborative work shares with readers the viewpoints of health professionals, nurses, nurse's aids and home caregiver, as well as those of ill people who highlight some of the unique challenges that people experience in moments when directly confronted by pain and the prospect of their own deaths. The survey emphasizes a concept of palliative treatment that is likely to extend far beyond the last seconds of life. In view of the fast-growing number of aging and ill people in France, this country will soon need to provide genuine "healthcare for the incurable" by adapting medical practices that are above all else designed and implemented to treat and to cure. French description: Quels soins donne-t-on a un malade qui va mourir? Et que dit-on que l'on fait? Que dit-il, lui, qui est place dans l'incertitude profonde de son sort? L'entend-on? Comment l'entendre? Et que lui repondre? Bien souvent les questions qui se posent a l'approche de la mort sont laissees au non-dit. Et les silences se creusent entre pudeur et impuissance, respect et fuite, comprehension et angoisse. Pour briser le silence, sans imposer un discours, ce livre manifeste une attention originale: en donnant largement la parole aux soignants et aux malades, il rappelle inlassablement la dissymetrie de leurs situations, insurmontable par principe. Mais ce faisant, il interroge ce qui se dit de part et d'autre, liberant ainsi une autre voie, celle de l'ecoute comme possibilite et foyer de relations porteuses de sens. De ces rapprochements de paro